Hop, Skip & a Jump ~ and for anyone considering a holiday in Cymru

‘spoon’, you will only be a hop, skip and a jump from what some folks consider the ‘heartland’, Dyfed, and the roads there are full of lovely drives, as are many of the off routes, great hikes and places to explore, including the language and music. That includes the drive to the heart of that area, Aber…

"Aberystwyth" is for some Welsh the ‘centre of the universe’, what with the University there and the National Library, places I used to frequent. Another lovely drive is to Mac(k), or Machynlleth, and Newtown has a music shop that stocks folk items and whose proprietor would be a good first contact. In that area there is also Breton music and dance, but don’t confuse ‘circle dancing’ with that, though there is some cross over… Opportunities to learn the language are widespread and they have a nice accent on it in that area. Aberystwyth, Mac and Newtown have sessions, including Irish, and I’m sure there was also something in Llangurig.

There are regular dances too, but the Welsh ones exist in two forms, and the music can sometimes be similarly divided ~ the Twmpath Dawns, or Barn Dance, very similar to an English ceilidh, and the equivalent of the RSCDS (Royal Scottish Country Dancing ~ who also hold some dancing thereabouts, such as in Aber) ~ Cymdeithas Ddawns Werin Cymraeg / The Welsh Folk Dance Society ~ who have a weekly meeting in Aberystwyth at the Urdd hall, though this is mostly ‘performance-centric’, more formal and consequently with the starch you find in most RSCDS events ~ sorry, my biases are showing (I had fun, but my humour was not always appreciated, my wife put a stop to the lark) ~ ask the tourist folk in Aber, or stop in at the Welsh shop on the corner "Cerdd Ystwyth Music. The folks who are involved in that were and are involved in other things…including the Irish dance and sessions and a Welsh session that used to be held in Borth.

Here’s a shop in Llanidloes, and it seems they were involved in contributing the session information above ~
Mouse Music ~ 6 China St ~ SY18 6AB

Sadly, no one has contributed any information on the other sessions in that area, and I know there are several. There used to be regular ‘house sessions’ too, but those may have dried up? Best of luck, and I was going to send this ‘undercover’, but others may benefit from the information and placing it in the notes to a Welsh tune may even result in some of the many other Welsh sessions getting posted here on site, I hope…

Hetty, Cymraeg / Welsh is basically a phonetic language, so once you have the few sounds that are unusual to English, like the double ‘LL’, the ‘CH’ and ‘RH’ ~ the rest is considerably easier than English or Irish… Like any language there are a number of dialects, and there are some I am particularly fond of, my wife’s included, all bias clear… ;-)

Yes, it does ‘mutate’, but that has clear rules too and is easy to eventually get to terms with. There were Welsh language classes, easy introductions, on S4C, which we get on Terrestrial with a booster, and also on Radio Wales & Cymru, which seem reasonably easy to pick up. There are a lot of different self-teach courses, enough that there’s probably something for everyone, even one that includes the less common swearing and is structured more along soap opera lines… It is never too late, never, for anything. It is only too late when all the time has run out and there is no more…